Xiaomi Beats Samsung To Become The Top-Selling Smartphone Brand In India

Yes, the Korean-giant has lost its position to Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi, which has become India's top smartphone vendor.

India has emerged as the top priority for electronics and software maker Xiaomi - above even the Chinese market, according to founder and chief executive Lei Jun. "Despite annual growth of 17 per cent, Samsung failed to maintain its lead, shipping just over 7.3 million smartphones (25 per cent share) to take second place", Canalys said in its report. That puts it ahead of ahead of Samsung, Lenovo, Motorola, Oppo and Vivo in that order, each with around 6 percent of market share.

When sales for the entire calendar year 2017 is taken into account, Samsung is still the topper with 24 percent market share, with Xiaomi trailing behind at 19 percent.

A few weeks ago, a regulatory filing was spotted in which Xiaomi had revealed plans to expand its product portfolio in the Indian market.

China-based Xiaomi has one of the most impressive success stories in the Indian market.

"The power struggle between Xiaomi and Samsung will continue well into 2018, as Samsung revamps its low-priced portfolio and fights to take back the aspirational status it once held in minds of Indian consumers", said Rushabh Doshi, Canalys Research Analyst, in a statement.

Chinese brands have disrupted the competitive landscape of India's smartphone segment in the previous year, according to Tarun Pathak, associate director at Counterpoint.

Xiaomi is now leading the smartphone shipments in the country with roughly 8.2 million units in Q4, 2017. Overall, Samsung shipped more smartphones than Xiaomi did in India during the entire year of 2017, Counterpoint said.

Samsung offered better margins and funding to the offline channel to create phone consumer demand. "We owe our undisputed leadership to the love and trust of millions of our consumers in India". According to a company rep, Samsung boasts of a 45% value market share and 40% volume market share. "This helped Xiaomi to surpass the long-reigning market leader Samsung for the first time ever", said Pathak.

As we all know, India is world's most popular smartphones market and the number of users of smartphones are more than the United States.

As of August in 2017, Xiaomi India's president Manu Kumar Jain said the company's smartphones were available from 600 physical retail stores such as chain partners including Vijay Sales and local smartphone shops, in 11 tier 1 and tier 2 cities in India.